So-Much-Makes-Sense-Once-We-Get-the-Connections7
Australian Shore
A Message In A Bottle
Half buried in the sand dunes
near my beach house
lies a green, corked wine bottle.
I had to smash it
to get the letter out.
Who was the mysterious
message-bottler?
An odd fantasy
of a tall, dark and handsome
billionaire,
bored on his luxury cruiser,
crossed my mind.
'Please help us
and save our lives,'
it's author,
a nine-year-old girl
named Brindah.
A Sri Lankan asylum seeker,
thwarted from reaching Australia's shores,
her dreamland, her only aim.
Leaning over the rail
of a small rickety cargo boat
amongst three hundred desperate people,
Brindah put the message
in a bottle
and threw it overboard.
I know,
you would prefer
a romantic billionaire,
but the ethnic Tamil child,
lost and scared,
is the only one I have.
I found a treasure.
A message in a bottle.
Now I have to find that child.
Asked about Brindah's plea,
the Australian Immigration Minister said
that she was just one millions of refugees
seeking a better life.
She is now in Merak,
an Indonesian detention centre,
for another ten or twenty
years of her life.
'Please, think of us. Please,'
I finish reading her message in a bottle:
'We have lived in the forest for a month.
Please sir, take us to your country.
There must be a place somewhere for us...'
Brindah will get old and wrinkly,
locked behind an Indonesian wall,
dreaming about our Australian shores.
I'm sorry, my dear Brindah.
I'm just a writer.
I'll keep your bottle and write a poem...
about YOU.
About YOUR PEOPLE.
And what would happen
if you managed to reach our shores.
BOAT PEOPLE
Boat people are coming.
Struggling to reach the shores
of a 'Promised land',
like others
before them,
for a hundred years -
following the Dream Time people
and British settlement.
Another day is starting
with a kookaburra laughing.
The newcomers are sitting
in the shadow of a Eucalyptus tree,
studying English grammar
and how to feel free -
behind a barbed wire fence.
Another year is ending
in the summer at midnight.
Listening to the Aussie sounds
as they look at the southern sky.
Having sewn their lips together,
they think about their roots
and the children for which
they sacrifice...
And their children
are running
happily on the sand
leaving their footprints
hopefully
forever on the red land.
I just wish that Brindah's footprints would be amongst them.
